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Chapter One
*
There are no streetcars in Oblivion. There aren't any streetcars anywhere in America, as far as I know. I don't count the trolley cars in San Francisco. Since I moved here I've been wishing streetcars would make a comeback. I know it's hopeless. I hate internal combustion engines and the civilization that has been built on them. I shouldn't take it so personally. But I read in Selected Philosophical Essays that hatred of civilization is not necessarily an irrational projection onto the world of personal psychological difficulties. So I know it's not just me.
My house is a rickety yellow thing at the dead end of West Street. The owner moved away and doesn't care what happens to it as long as he gets a check every month. It's a comfortable place, and I sometimes get the feeling that it has remained standing as a favor to me. I'm sure I'll be its last occupant. Every evening I fix myself a plate of beans and rice, pour myself a glass of wine, then go upstairs and eat in bed listening to the night sounds from the woods behind the house. Tonight it is too hot to go to sleep, so I just sit with the empty bowl in my lap trying to imagine someone in China doing exactly the same thing. Of course the time difference would make it daytime on the other side of the world, so anyone sitting up in bed with an empty plate in their lap is bound to be ill or in prison or both. Right? I make a mental calculation. The world's population is somewhere over five billion, so the probability is there. In fact, it is likely that there are thousands of us all around the globe doing exactly the same thing: sitting in bed with our empty bowl, staring at the wall. The process of calculation lulls me into a mild sort of hypnosis, and I find my thoughts wandering from the world of cozy musings in bed to the world of torture described in Amnesty International brochures, the ones that read: right now, today, the horrors of torture and political detention are everyday incidents in fully one-third of the world's countries. I realize that what seems to me a comforting extrapolation, the projection of my measly being into the entire human universe, is also a bloody goddamn nightmare.
I reach for the phone and dial a number.
"Horace here."
"Hello?"
"Right now, today, the horrors of torture are everyday incidents in one-third of the world's countries." I pause, wait for the click of the receiver.
"Is that a fact?" A woman's voice.
"Yes, it is. Do you ever find yourself wondering about the unspeakable things that are happening this very moment around the globe?"
A pause. "To tell you the truth, sir, I do not." Another pause. "But I go to church every Sunday and pray to Almighty Christ that I never have to."
I consider how to respond, but my finger slips and I accidentally hang up on her. I can't remember the number I'd dialed, which is a shame because I would have enjoyed talking to the old lady. There was a grain of frustrated reason in her voice, the voice of a heavy smoker.
I get out of bed and go into the kitchen, put my bowl in the sink, stand at the back door, and watch for falling stars. The outline of a large water tower teeters like a hydrocephalic child against the night sky. The name of the town is painted on it in matte black letters. You can read them during the day. OBLIVION. At night, despite the silhouette of the tower, you can see a big swath of sky. I turn off the kitchen light, sit on the stoop and scrutinize the summer night, listen to the chorusing crickets and cicadas. The sky is clear and brilliant with stars. I wish I hadn't broken the binoculars I confiscated from the kid next door. It would be nice to use them now. I ended up paying for them anyway, and now the kid is spying on me with a higher-powered set from a safer distance.
The evening wears on and I walk to the top of the street, turn left, and follow Old Route 47 out of town. The cornfields are about chest high, and from the slight elevation of the roadway I can see across them. All 180 degrees of the horizon are open to me. A few cars speed past. I step into the shadow of the field and hide as they blow by. At night the traffic on this side of town is light. Few use this road since the new thoroughfare was built several years ago. I like to walk out here for that reason.
Old Route 47 leads to the back of a factory that employs a good part of the town. Semantech, pronounced semmatech by the locals. They produce parts for cruise missiles and other weapons, and they've been doing it for long enough now that everybody takes it for granted. A few months ago the president came through and gave a speech.
At eleven the shifts change and the parking lot becomes a sea of clustered headlights. The new thoroughfare, a four-lane road with highway signs and cloverleaf exits, takes this traffic to the east and around to the north end of town, where the new shopping malls are being built. The town has expanded in that direction, leaving the southern end, with its older houses and poorer neighborhoods, to a quiet, slow decay.
At a bend in the road is an ancient mound. Excavated around the turn of the century by the State Historical Society and the Bureau of American Ethnology, it is the highest elevation for miles around. A rotting picnic bench shaded by two medium-sized elm trees and a rusty plaque are the last signs of the state's interest in it. I follow the path that winds around to the top, brushing the tall grass out of the way as I make my way up. The ground is hard and dry and my footsteps fall with a hollow, dusty thud. On top of the mound the nighttime vista spreads out, open fields and the constellation-filled summer sky. Moving directly south from the North Star, I find Hercules low over the horizon. Behind me the town of Oblivion, to my right the factory with its high fence and orange anticrime lamps. These are my coordinates. The rest is a dark sea of fields.
* * *
The secret about Oblivion is that it is identical to every other place on the outskirts of the era we live in. The malls and food franchises are here, the idle libraries, the cable and satellite networks, the bad manners, all the septic, inflamed dysfunctions and disorders. An airport was built, but it provides entertainment rather than escape. The corporate moguls who planned it have never come here themselves. If they did, it would only irritate them to see the cars parked along the roadside and the bored people watching the finely logoed airplanes land beyond the fence.
I walk out there now and then to join the fun. Several times a day the big airplanes land. They come in so low over the fence at the eastern end of the runway that people standing there hold their ears and duck. Engines roaring, the flying steel swoops down; puffs of smoke erupt underneath as the wheels hit the ground; the beast brakes, reduces speed. At the far end of the runway it swings abruptly to the left and rolls toward the three-gate terminal, where an eager ground crew waits. In half an hour it's gone again. People finish their cans of soda, pile hack into their cars and pickups, and drive away.
I overhear a conversation between a young couple.
"One of these days it'll be me in that thing."
"You ever flown?"
"Sure have."
"Where'd you fly?"
"Florida."
"Vacation?"
"Yup. One of these days I'll be gone for good. I'll take you with me too."
"To Florida?"
"Sure."
They nuzzle briefly. The young man fishes a cigarette from his shirt pocket, puts it between his lips with a proletarian swagger, and lights it, cupping the flame. They stand in silence for a few moments longer, his dry, red-rashed skin a homely contrast to the buttery blue hue that glows under hers, then climb into his pickup and drive away.
I did not arrive in Oblivion by air. I came in on a truck that I'd hitched a ride with. The driver of the rig was a black man from Chicago. His name was Alex, and he said the only reason he picked me up was that he was bored and needed somebody to talk to. He played a tape of songs he had recorded from his collection of old sheet music.
"Everything was published before 1914. My collection stops at World War I."
"Why?"
"No reason. I just decided to keep it that way."
"Why do you collect the stuff?"
"Like to play them. On my Hammond."
"I never heard anything like it before."
"Won't hear nothing like it again, neither. These songs are so old my grandmother can't remember them." The tape played on, leaving me to look out at the passing landscape. He let me out at the interstate exit for Oblivion.
"You sure you want to get out here?"
I said yes.
"Just because you like the name of the town?"
I said yes again.
He shook his head, let out a long and heartfelt Sweeeet Jesus, and let me go, honking the horn good-bye.
I walked the four miles into the center of town and bought a newspaper. Nobody paid attention to me as I sat on the bench in front of the Town Hall. I liked that and looked through the classifieds, saw an ad for a house to rent, and walked out to where I now live. What I liked about the house were the scrubby little bird nests under the eaves of the sinking front porch.
"I'll clear those away tomorrow," the landlord said. He was a small, thin man with missing teeth. He said he'd been living alone in the house ever since his wife died. Cancer got her.
"Leave the nests," I said.
"Whatever you want."
We shook hands, and the following week he moved to Florida.
* * *
At the bank Derringer, the manager, waits for me at his desk. Everybody in Oblivion thinks I'm a lunatic. But Derringer just thinks I'm a loafer. He has put the word out, and the word is that I'm not insane, just a rich weirdo. People generally leave me alone. Not because being weird is intimidating but because being rich is. Derringer pats his fingertips together, asks me what I think of such and such and so and so and up and down, and I always say I don't know. This is only a formality. All day long as he manages the bank, Derringer manipulates a rubber ball in his hand. He rolls the ball between his palms, on his desk top, squeezes it. He would like to become my friend. He thinks there's a secret he will discover by making friends with me. He squeezes his rubber ball and leans back in his chair and grins "How much do you need today?" I tell him, and he always gets it for me. He likes to fill out all the slips of paper, and I don't. A nice arrangement all around.
I leave the bank and sit on the bench in the square in front of the Town Hall, the one I sat on when I first arrived in Oblivion. Across the street are Oblivion's first buildings, built around the turn of the century. Recently renovated, their facades newly painted, they are now occupied by Oblivion's young professional establishment. A lawyer's office in the old mayor's house, a real estate broker, an accountant, a dentist, and the temporary offices of a candidate for the state Senate. There is a sandwich shop that is never open and a movie theater that is losing business to the multiplex out at the mall. In a building on the corner dated 1919, someone has set up a shop called Purrfection that sells things to people who love cats: jewelry with cats, lawn and garden accessories with cat motifs, tee shirts and key chains and toys and games--all having to do with cats. On the next block is my bank, the public library, a restaurant called the Corn Tassel, and a building with an auto-parts store on the ground floor and a secondhand bookstore above it. That block looks slightly shabbier than the one directly across from the Georgian-style Town Hall with the plaza and the bench and the monument to the sons of Oblivion who died in the two World Wars.
I eat a stalk of celery, pretend there are no trucks or cars or foul-smelling air. I sit to pass the time. Sometimes I'll have company on the bench, and sometimes that company will want to talk. I usually go along, depending on the topic. If I've had a string of bad luck on the telephone the night before, I'll try to steer the conversation. It's hard to get people to respond to certain things. On the telephone people are spontaneous.
"Nice morning."
"Yes." I nod and take another stalk of celery from the pocket of my jacket. I chew slowly and think of all the forged and phony Christian sayings I'm capable of, the ones that resemble the twittering of birds and that always dissolve in my mouth before they can be uttered--such as, "The love and peace of Jesus Christ be with you, my brother." Or something like that. I wish I could make myself talk like that. I know that if I did the word would go out that yes, I'm a nut--but a pious one, and if that happened they'd probably want to elect me mayor of the town.
"I remember when that there was a feed store." The man inclines his head in the direction of Purrfection, leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and rubs his hands. "Can't figure how they stay in business."
"With cats, it would seem."
"That's what I mean. I can't figure."
"Was it always a feed store?"
"Feed store moved out, let's see, around 1963, I'd say. Then Harlan's Hardware opened up, stayed there must've been twenty, twenty-five years. Then they moved out. Now it's a goddamn pet shop that don't even sell pets." He rubs his palms together for a moment, then turns and offers me a handshake. "Name's Maver. Ed Maver."
I take his hand. "Horace," I say. "Quintus Horatius Flaccus."
"That's some name you got there, son. What do people call you?"
"Horace. Just Horace."
"Pleased to meet you, Horace. I seen you walking around here for a while now. Been meaning to make your acquaintance. You live in town?"
"West Street."
"That's a fair hike."
I nod.
"You don't own an automobile, I've noticed."
"No, I don't."
He nods, leans back, and crosses a knob-kneed leg. I finish my celery, and we sit watching a large truck maneuver a tight left turn onto Main Street.
"My son-in-law is sales manager over at Chevyland. If you ever get around to it."
"Do they sell cats there?"
Maver laughs. "Not unless you call a Chevrolet a cat." He idly rubs the ankle resting on his knee. "Come to think of it, what in hell is a Chevrolet?"
"A word invented by General Motors."
"It don't mean nothing? What about Chevy? There's a word that's got to mean something."
"It's a variant of chivvy."
"What in hell does chivvy mean?"
"To harass."
Maver looks at me from the corner of his eye. But his instinct is to talk on, to dispel his intuition. "Well, is that a fact? I'll have to tell Pete that. He'll appreciate it."
These sorts of conversations come my way every so often. I find myself going along on a ride I never asked for. Occasionally I'll pop a few questions, the telephone sort. But more often I end up with somebody like Maver whose presence becomes tedious the moment the talk veers into the personal. As expected, he goes right into let me tell you about my this, and I have a that, and such and such reminds me of the time so and so. I sit and chew my stalk of celery while Maver talks.
"I told Pete there was nothing doing. The man can't expect to get up and move his whole family...." His volubility and passion for anecdote soon combine into a frothing storytelling mess that leaves me wondering if he'll ever notice I'm not listening to a word he is saying. I can't stand to listen to people when they launch into anecdotal orbit and drift along as if nobody and nothing else matters. The sameness of people's orations makes me realize how common all individual experience really is. Is subjectivity just an illusion? Certainly, the more a person prattles on about his or hers, the duller and duller he or she becomes. But the marvelous objectivity of this observation doesn't strike me as all that grand in the end, either. Every life is many days, day after day. Funny how this monotonous little statement elevates the fact of everyday existence to the realm of Truth. I like Truth because silence is its natural companion. Facts are loud and boring.
I interrupt Maver. "Someone once wrote that every life is many days, day after day."
Maver turns to me with a puzzled smile, scratches the back of his head, and nods. "True. True." Then he returns to Pete, his son-in-law manager at Chevyland, whom, I assume, he has mentioned so I'll go buy a car from him.
I get up to leave and for no particular reason say, "The peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you, Mr. Maver."
Maver is silenced. "Nice meeting you, Mr. Horace," he calls after me.
* * *
I walk up Main Street, the thoroughfare leading into and out of town, and turn onto Liberty, a quiet, shaded street where the well-to-do families of Oblivion built their homes almost a century ago. There are sidewalks here, concrete slabs nicely upturned by the roots of the old elms that grow along the street. The houses are set back from the road, their wide lawns shaded by the mature trees. A car passes by. I hear a thud and a crack. The car slows, stops. The driver gets out, leaving his door open.
"Did you see them?" He approaches me, a man in his thirties wearing a suit.
"Who?"
"The kids."
"No."
"This is the second time I've come down this street. They've been at it all morning." He fumes and steps back toward his car to have a look. He runs his fingers over a tiny dent in the side door. "Goddamn kids are throwing rocks."
"What a good idea."
The man is engrossed in his inspection. I want to tell him the kids are only trying to preserve the tranquillity of their street by discouraging people like him from driving down it. Suddenly he discovers a crack in the passenger window. "Goddamn those little bastards!" He leaps into his car and pulls over to the curb. He slams the door and stalks across a lawn to the nearest house. I try to spot the band of little Luddites. But they are well concealed in the bushes and trees of their neighborhood, tittering quietly among themselves as the enraged driver goes from house to house complaining.
It is noon. The sky is clear. I sit in a rusty, wrought-iron gazebo at the end of Liberty Street. It is set in the center of a small, weedy park that forms the southern boundary to this section of the town. A plaque on the gazebo reads Bequest of Major Perry Wilkington, USA, in memory of his beloved wife and daughter. I've seen all of their tombstones in the Presbyterian cemetery. Major Perry Wilkington lived from 1851 until 1920. He is buried with his wife, Ann S. Wilkington; his daughter, Martha Wilkington Murrow; and his grandson, Perry Wilkington Murrow. His wife, who was also born in 1851, died in 1884. His daughter was born in 1871 and died on August 6, 1894. In childbirth, it would appear. Perry Wilkington Murrow, his grandson, lived only from August 6, 1894, to August 12, 1894. I've knitted together an outline of their lives based on the gazebo plaque and the dates on their tombstones, and I imagine the following: Martha married a man named Murrow. Since he isn't buried with her, I surmise that he left the town soon after August 12, 1894, and never returned. I surmise too that Murrow was a cad, a seducer; maybe he married her for her money. When she died, either the old major ran him out of town or he ran away of his own accord. I've found no Murrow buried anywhere in the cemetery. None of the women in the major's life lived for very long. I imagine that the last twenty-six years of his life were spent in kind of dignified sorrow and that he erected the gazebo as a monument to both his family and his grief.
A dog appears at my feet, looks up at me, panting. I glance around for the owner.
"I see we're alone."
The dog pants, sits at my knee, and stares at me.
Stomachs infrequently hungry disdain any commonplace victuals, I quote from my Roman namesake. A car turns up Liberty Street, then screeches to a stop as a hail of stones falls on it. The driver, a woman, gets out to inspect the car, then continues on slowly, scanning the street for culprits. I'm in an expansive mood and continue with a few fragments of Horace's second satire. Values of simple and frugal existence, good friends, is my subject. Not any notion of mine, but the doctrine of farmer Ofellus, unsystematic philosopher, schooled in no wisdom but Nature's.
The dog begins to sniff around the bench. I pat it and it looks at me, tongue lolling. I take a carrot from my pocket and begin to eat it. The dog sits and watches me, begging.
Now let me name the advantages gained by a plain sort of diet.... Have you noticed how pale people look when leaving a multi-course banquet? Not only the body is sluggish . . . but there is also dullness of mind, and our spark of divine upper air is dragged earthward
The dog continues the vigil, droopy eyed and skeptical.
"I know, I know. Why should I be lecturing?" I have extensive resources and income. Why must unfortunates suffer privation when you arc so wealthy? Why must the ancient and venerable shrines of the gods be left shabby? Why, impious creature, why not devote some of your hoard?
I hand over the remaining bit of carrot. The dog snatches it and swallows. A long, piercing whistle. The dog's ears prick up and it races off. Not a glance backward. I remain in the rusty little capsule for the better part of an hour. In Wilkington's gazebo nothing can diminish the vivid present. At one point I spot a little band of four or five boys scampering across the wide yard of the gabled and turreted house on the corner. They start across the street but stop short as soon as they see me and dart off in the direction of the woods.
On the way home I stop at Winesburg Wine and Liquor. Mr. Anderson takes out his vintner's charts whenever I come into the store, and I listen to him as he talks about people I couldn't care less about and who probably don't even buy wine from him. He's a puffy little man with a perfectly round belly that juts out like a melon. Whenever I stop in he disappears into the back room and comes out with his latest wares. This time he sells me a bottle of 1982 Chateau Brane-Cantenac and a cabernet sauvignon from California. He tells me the California vineyard is owned by some Hollywood movie director and it is the best wine they've ever produced. I take it home and drink it, my soon unsober mind trailing off into a casual lugubriousness.
The weather is good. I sit on a battered lawn chair in the back yard, pretending I'm a derelict on the Paris Metro.
"Monsieur, may I invite you to join me in a glass of wine?"
"Oui. Of course. How do you like the view?"
"The view? She is marvelous."
"Do you think a woman should go without makeup?"
"It's vulgar."
"Do you think they should remove the advertisements from the Metro?"
"Never, Monsieur. Never."
Glen Wilkington, the wood behind my house, is thick with leaves. Oak. Maple. Ash. A path leads through it to an abandoned railway line that cuts across the southwestern corner of the town and leads to a crowded intersection on the other side, where the fast-food franchises and convenience stores sprout. Beyond the wood is the water tower, surrounded by a chain-link fence and straddling a small concrete pumping station. Beyond that is a large field, part of which is planted and part of which has gone to pasture, a secluded little meadow. The Wilkingtons of the gazebo owned this land and saved it for posterity. The wood they protected from ax and saw, the meadow from plow, the field from factory. For most of the century the little glen has been the only wooded land left in the whole county. If Major Wilkington had been possessed of less foresight, it too would have been cut down, and the rail corridor that was compromised for in the middle of the last century would now be part of the interstate highway system.
With Mr. Anderson's best wine suffusing my blood, I imagine myself to be the very last locomotive that passed through Glen Wilkington. Mushrooms and other fungi grow in the rot of the old ties. It makes me think of sex, of devouring, self-preserving flesh that feeds on a rotten past to flourish in the rotten present.
A while later I find myself stumbling through the woods.
Copyright © 1997 Frederick Reuss. All rights reserved.
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